They say people shouldn’t forget their past. I haven’t. Reason why I wish to continue from my previous post. If you have to go back to my post to know what I wrote, then it’s you who has forgotten the past.
We were talking about ‘fixed-action pattern’ in animals. A preset behavioural response to external stimuli. Human beings are no different. We blindly act in a predefined manner when we see, hear or experience a certain stimulus. Often times we don’t think rationally and act in strange ways when we encounter something. We do things that we won’t if we realized what we were doing. If we realize, at worst, we would curse ourselves for it and, at best, laugh at ourselves!
An experiment done by Harvard University’s social psychologist Ellen Langer will prove this better. Ellen wanted to find out why and how we wish to help someone who asks for it. For instance, when someone accosts us on the road and asks us money, most of just ignore and walk away. But when someone says he or she hasn’t eaten in three days and hence asks for help, some of us feel sorry and offer money.
Why? Since they gave us a ‘reason’ for us to help them!
Ellen approached people standing in queue near the xerox machine. He told them, ‘I have five pages. Because I am in a hurry, can I use the machine?’ He did it multiple times, and 94% of the times, people let him.
He then changed his script a bit. To the next set of people, he said, ‘I have five pages. Can I use the machine?’ This time only 60% of the people allowed.
You think the difference between the two is due to Ellen mentioning the reason that he was in a hurry. Not really.
Next, he asked a different set of people, ‘I have five pages. Because I have to xerox, can I use the machine.’ This time 93% of the people consented.
Note, he just said used the word ‘because’ but never mentioned the reason. Yet as many people let him use the machine. We just need to hear a reason. Even when the reason is not given, when our mind hears the word ‘because’, it assumes it has heard the reason!
Why are we like this?
The world is spinning at the same speed. Just that it now feels faster. We live in a complicated world with chaos and confusion reigning supreme. The speed of our own life leaves us little room to catch our breath. We neither have the time to understand things nor the inclination to do so. To keep up with this fast-paced life, we depend on short-cuts. Bingo, fixed-action patterns!
English philosopher Alfred Whitehead said it nicely: ‘Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.’